Private Religion
by Robyn the Perpetually 15
Summary: He had worshipped her, long before it had become a doctrine. Yuartel


A/N: Yeah, another angsty!Yuan fic. But he was bugging me to write another scene with him in the story I'm writing, but there's no reason for him to even be in that chapter so hopefully this'll shut him up. Haha, that'll teach him. But of course, knowing my luck he'll sulk when his time _does_ come. Bah.

Private Religion

He avoided the Tree when he could, and dreaded the days when his duties would inevitably take him there. He knew the emotions that would be stirred when he saw It, when he saw Her. And yet here he was, staring at the ruins with a vague sort of apprehension that he hadn't felt in years.

He hadn't felt much of anything in years, really. It had been necessary, when the plodding of time became too heavy of him to bear -- on occasion he had turned himself off for decades at a time as underlings and seconds-in-command died in front of him. It was the robotic sort of efficiency that Mithos would have approved of, and for all his protestations he saw its merits. Being alive was a tiring exercise that he would wish on no one.

But the past year had been odd, to say the least. He had found it necessary to wake himself from his self-induced stupor as the world strode forward at a pace he found startling after four millennia of enforced stagnation. He had found himself doing things he had never thought he would do -- killing _her_.

It was what he had been trying to do for years, of course, but it had always been an abstraction, a shadow just beyond his reach. Now that reality stared him in the face, he couldn't do it -- though the girl looked nothing like her, all his other senses were telling him that it was Martel sleeping peacefully in that bed, Martel breathing slowly in the night air, Martel's mana swirling through the hotel room.

But in the end, she wasn't Martel. She never would be, never should be. The knowledge of what her former comrades had been doing would hurt her far more than any physical wound. He couldn't protect her then, and he would be damned he if couldn't protect her now.

And then it had been over, in the blink of an eye. He had heard, third-hand, that she _had_ come back in the girl's form, albeit briefly; and his heart ached that he had once again been too slow; and he had been surprised at the depth of emotion he now felt.

And Kratos had left without him -- too slow again -- and diplomatic relations had started up; towns were rebuilt, Exspheres destroyed, the economy boomed; the world mended.

It was if life had started back up again without him.

His disorientation was partially his own fault, he supposed. His routine detachment from the world had turned time into jelly where the cycle of life and death blurred into a single unbroken wheel; and when he woke up again -- as he had just last year -- the world flung him back into the dance of pain. But he had needed to escape, lest he go insane. He wondered if that was what had happened to Mithos.

Even as he sat on a bit of rubble, delaying his own pilgrimage to the Tree, he let out a bitter laugh. The twisted lies that Mithos had spewed forth had become true, in their own way. Martel had already been an idol in his own mind, but that private religion of his had spread to the masses in a way that sickened him. All those people never had any idea who they were praising. They had never known the way the sunlight had glinted on her hair, the way she would rub her hands when she was worrying, the way she would giggle whenever Mithos would do something particularly amusing, the special smile she had just for him --

And now she _was_ a Goddess, not just in name, not just in his mind, but in the flesh, walking on the solid earth below.

But She wasn't her, wasn't Martel -- even at this distance he could sense the innumerable souls sacrificed to Mithos's ideal encompassed by that lithe frame. She was in there, somewhere, but finding her would be trying to separate a single drop out of the ocean.

When he had found out the truth of the matter, the reality behind his beloved's guise, he had been surprised to find himself relieved at the prospect. He was forced to search himself, like he hadn't done in centuries; like he hadn't done since he had formed the Renegades.

His heart said that he was afraid that, if she did come back, she wouldn't be able to love this pale version of himself he had become. He could never touch her with hands that had been bathed in the blood of many young girls. She would recoil from him, be disgusted with him, and he knew he couldn't handle that. He had died thousand of years ago, when she had fallen lifeless to the ground, and he was now sustained only by sheer force of will. Her rejection would kill him a thousand times over.

He knew this, and was satisfied; but the deepest part of him, the part of him that he wished didn't exist because it knew _all _of him, the darkest parts he dared not venture into, said: he was afraid that, if she did come back, he wouldn't be able to love _her_ anymore.

Sometimes he wished he could remember her properly. Memory had become blurred over time, until all that was left was images, snatches of feeling, and a hole in his heart that would never heal. But what he feared was that the shape of the hole was different from the shape of the thing left behind. Even Lifeless Beings changed, he realized. Maybe the Martel he still loved was just an ideal, something to believe in as the world around him crumbled. He had taken the happiness he had known and clutched to its memory like a child's doll.

She knew that, it seemed, and She kept Her distance when he came, and that almost made it worse. Like there was still a fragment of _his_ Martel there that he could hold onto, only for it to slip away like the illusion it was.

So he kept his distance as well, and maintained his delusions that were all that held him up now. He could sit on the edge of ruin and watch Her dance and let his mind slip, pretend that it was _her_, that all was right with the world.

And so it ended as it had begun, as a quiet worship from afar.

A/N: ...You know, I had always wondered why a millennia-old Seraph couldn't manage to assassinate a clumsy sixteen-year-old girl. Now I know.


End file.
